Trickster
by agelade
Summary: The Other plots to make good on his threat to Loki; Loki escapes his Asgardian prison cell and causes mischief on Midgard; the Avengers re-assemble to rescue one of their own.
1. A Wondrous Feast

TRICKSTER

A Wondrous Feast

Thor Odinsson strode through a warren of corridors that had grown familiar over the months, carrying under one arm a parcel wrapped in red cloth. Gilt and draped in fine fabrics, these halls weren't unlike the halls he had raced through with his brother when they'd been small, chasing after one another or competing or fighting or laughing. But the smell was wetter, colder, and unmoved. The stone felt thicker under his feet, anchored by time and less alive than the well-travelled paths stories above him. He'd grown accustomed to it quickly, and then had liked it, because he enjoyed all things which even hinted at coming pleasure.

And while none else would consider his self-appointed task pleasurable -_ things _lived down here - Thor relished these journeys because each led to another opportunity to regain something he'd lost. He waved the guard aside with a careless gesture and pushed past without waiting for a response.

"I have brought you a wondrous feast, my brother!" he said, his voice echoing.

Loki ducked his head and winced. He moved his hands to cover his ears, but even behind the gleaming bars of his Asgardian prison, his wrists were shackled on a short lead from his waist and he could not quite reach. His wardens had insisted he not be able to gain access to the bars themselves and had kept him on a lead attached to the far back wall above the cot he reclined upon. He glared balefully up at Thor. "Why are you here?"

Thor frowned. "I … have brought you a wondrous feast," he said again, thrusting the parcel forward in evidence.

Loki tilted his head in consideration. "Has it been a week already?" he murmured.

"Aye, and an adventuresome one! I shall regale you with stories of this week, my brother." Thor paused. "If that is what you wish."

Loki stared, then looked away. "It is," he admitted.

Thor grinned madly, motioning that the guard should unlock the door for him. The guard did so, as the guard did every time, and then left them alone to talk.

Thor set the table eagerly: the cloth onto the floor, onto it the platter and plates, mead from the horn at his side. Every week, he provided to his brother a meal he remembered from their youth was one of Loki's favorites in an attempt to win him, to woo him to good, to be the brother he had been for so many long years.

Loki had only just begun to accept his entreaty; before that, Thor had merely barged in, something Jane Foster would have disapproved of and something he was definitely going to remember when he was able to visit Midgard again, but something which he felt in this case was warranted.

"I had occasion to take a hunting party out to dispatch the grisk which has been taunting our borders," Thor began, seating himself on the floor to dine with his brother.

Loki watched him from the bed, sidewise. "A difficult task, even for you," he said mildly.

"Aye! But a grand adventure. We felled the beast in long glorious battle and brought its heart home for the evening's feast!"

Loki twisted his lip in distaste. "Wonderful."

"It was!" Thor beamed up from the table he'd set, expectant. He was not gifted in guile the way his brother was, calm and cool in speech, but he had learned that Loki could not turn him down if he merely kept on smiling at him, so, as he was inclined to do it anyway, he kept on smiling.

But Loki did not join him on the floor to dine as he had been doing for the previous three weeks. Instead, he leaned back against the wall and looked off, unhappy.

"Something troubles you," Thor guessed.

"Of course something troubles me," Loki hissed, suddenly animated. "Look at me, locked up in this cage like the monster you all know me to be. And you, a parody of a champion, the naive fool tempting the beast-!"

"Enough of this," Thor said. And his command was quiet, but Loki had always feared his anger even if he made a show of bravado; he snapped his mouth shut and shrank back against the wall, his gaze going distant again. Thor felt shame for having caused it. And even though Loki had said_ beast _only after Thor had told a story about defeating the grisk, he knew Loki wasn't referring to his hard-won battle that week. "I love you, my brother. I mourned for you. You cannot understand how deeply. It is my hope that my continued visitation to your prison will soften your heart to me, and that one day we may again battle alongside each other. My clever brother who once made the honeymilk stream from my nostrils in gales of laughter, my powerful brother who claimed masterhood of magic while he was yet a boy." Thor stood. "I wish to have that brother back." He turned to leave.

"You might clear away your mess," Loki said quietly.

Thor turned back. "You may yet find your appetite."

Loki looked at him then, eyes bright with anger, or something else. "Really. Leaving me alone with all of this?" He gestured vaguely to the meagre place-setting, with its shining knives and forks. "With potential weapons. You do me more harm than good."

Thor frowned. "Then I shall say that I have forced this meal upon you." He sat back down. "Come and eat before my lie becomes truth."

"You couldn't lie if your Hammer depended on it," Loki snapped, but there was no energy in it. He unfolded from his perch on the wooden slat bed and slid down to the floor without ever having properly stood up. He was thinner than even he'd once been, so different from the other Asgardians. Even the other magic wielders had a healthy strength and heft to them, where Loki had always been frail-looking. It made sense to Thor now that he knew his brother was not of Asgard, but at the time, Loki's lack of a traditional warrior's strength had only instilled in Thor an intense desire to protect his younger brother, even when Loki had proven it unnecessary.

They ate in silence. Loki picked, while Thor tore off great chunks of flesh with his teeth - another indulgence he would have to curb when he again met with Jane Foster.

"I was afraid," Loki said finally, having gotten through perhaps half of his large leg of mutton.

Thor paused. "You are rarely so plain, brother-"

"Stop calling me that."

"You will never not be my brother."

Loki closed his eyes, and Thor worried that perhaps the hurt was simply too deep, that even the mention of the word was too great a pain for Loki to bear. His mind was more complicated than Thor could fathom, he knew that, and it was twisted as well. But he had said_ I was afraid_, and that was more than he'd said about himself or his recent descent into madness than he'd ever said before and Thor waited to hear if he'd say anything else.

"Please, leave me," Loki whispered, and Thor gathered up his things. He bent to brush a kiss over his brother's forehead where Loki sat slumped on the floor in front of the bed, then stood up straight. "I will come again. If you wish it."

He waited, but Loki's answer was always the same.

"I don't."

* * *

"You always come," Loki said two weeks later.

"You are surprised," Thor replied, laying out their dinner.

"I suppose I imagined you'd have given up." Loki watched him, sprawled out on his small bed with his chained hands relaxed at his lap. "Will you regale me with your exploits again? Will you taunt me with this freedom you possess, to waltz in and out of my cage? Is this truly what brings you joy, brother?"

Thor did not comment on Loki's use of the word. It only ever seemed to upset him to have it pointed out: that "brother" sounded sweet from Loki's mouth even if he sneered while saying it; and that he hadn't sneered while saying it in at least a month, even when angry; and that Thor felt truly hurt that only Loki was allowed to say it in the first place.

Instead, he said, "What brings me joy, brother-" He ignored the flinch. "-Is the ever-increasing chance that you might once again welcome my love for you and make an attempt to prove to our fa- to Odin that you have changed."

"That I have changed," Loki muttered. "As if I would stoop - as if anyone would even believe-" He looked up at Thor sharply. "You'd believe. If I said I'd try to make amends."

"Why should I not?"

Loki gave him a perplexed look, a disbelieving one, exasperated, even.

Thor poured the mead and sat cross-legged, waiting for Loki to join him, which Loki did even as the mead tinkled into his glass. "They are saying," Thor continued, "you are planning to deceive me into believing you are well when you are not."

"Well?" Loki spat, picking up a fork and poking through the vegetables. "As if I'm sick? What idiocy. I would have given these mewling fools everlasting peace-"

"Are they right, brother?"

"Of course not."

Thor smiled wistfully. "When you say it, I want to believe you."

* * *

Thor returned to his brother's prison only hours later, Mjolnir in his hand. He murmured to the guard, who looked from him to the Trickster and then took off at a run, drawing his sword. The corridors above them began to thrum with a rumbling vibration, the air filled with cries and battle.

Loki looked up, sanguine. "That is an exceptionally raucous party, brother," he drawled.

"It is no party."

Loki frowned. Blinked. And instantly fear clouded his vision.

"He has come," Thor said. "He has come for you."

Loki was already on his feet, looking more animated than he had been in months, than he had during any of their spats at dinner, than any of their reminiscing. He fretted at the cuffs keeping his hands near his waist. Even as Thor unlocked the door to his cell, Loki came forward, circling around Thor with his hands up, until he reached the end of the tether keeping him from the bars of the prison.

"Please," he said.

"They will destroy Asgard."

Loki ducked his head, and Thor recognized it as a gambit, an attempt to gain Thor's sympathies, but he supposed it wasn't necessarily a lie - "Brother, consider-"

"They will destroy Asgard," Thor said again, coming for Loki who could only strain at the end of his chains. Thor grasped him around the arm and pulled him close, brandishing his Hammer. "Before they touch a hair on your head, they will have to destroy Asgard and myself." He swung at the chain binding Loki to the far back wall of the cell and crushed the dumbfounded Trickster to his chest. "Go now. To Midgard. I will find you when this is through."

Loki stared at him.

"Promise me that you will wait for me in Midgard!"

"Upon my heart," Loki breathed, his eyes shining with that same hopeless something Thor had seen in him on the top of Tony Stark's tower, just before Loki had stabbed him in the gut. But there was this time no tiny vicious knife, no inkling of a grin, just Loki tense with fear and promising everything in exchange for his own life.

Thor shoved him through the doors, manhandled him down the long corridors while the sounds of battle shook the stone above them. Thor gave him a final push down the corridor that led up and out through the back ways they had discovered together in their youth.

Loki stumbled once, glanced back at him, and then tore down the corridor until he reached the end of it. Thor watched. One direction held freedom from the magic suppressing qualities of the dungeons and certain escape. The other led to the weapons vault.

Loki stopped at the junction, stared at Thor for one very long moment, and then took off toward the weapons vault.

Mjolnir shook in Thor's white-knuckled grip. But the battle raged on in the corridors above and his people needed him.


	2. HEARTm

TRICKSTER

**Chapter 2**

**H.E.A.R.(Tm)**

One Month Later

"Tony."

"Pepper."

Pepper smiled, that wan, long-suffering smile that made Tony sit back from his work bench and push the hair from his forehead. He swung his hands out in a display of not-knowing. "What'd I do?"

"What _didn't_you do?"

Tony knitted his brows, taken aback and a little hurt. He spun around to the work surface behind him. "That's a ridiculous question. Too open-ended." He waved a hand, dismissing it and the extremities of a wire-frame 3D display emitting from the tabletop. He punctuated the rest of his sentence with gestures which tossed undesirable bits of the schematic, enlarged other bits, or lit them up in orange. "What did I do, and What am I supposed to do, and What do I really want to do - those are your go-to questions."

"Nevertheless, the question is, Tony, 'what didn't you do.'" Pepper circled him, smiling that sly smile that was supposed to - had always been supposed to, but now he _knew _that and so he should have been able to use that information - warn him that something Was Wrong. He studied her, leaned forward to try to derive the answer from her face, and he'd done that enough that she just laughed at him trying.

After a moment of _really _trying, because it was theoretically possible that somewhere amidst the gamma and strangeness of his life, he'd picked up psychic powers, Tony shrugged and spun his chair back to his work bench. "Sorry, Pep. You are going to have to be more cryptic. You know how I get when I'm working. I'm just..." He focused on a tiny bit of the diagram- "So." -traced a circuit, whispered to Jarvis- "Very." He flung his fingers out to explode the view into a glorious 3D display of light and genius, if he did say so himself. He spun back to Pepper, grinning triumphantly. "Dense."

Pepper was amused, but not amazed. She walked through the display as it spun around them both, dragging objects in it with her fingertips. "It's so nice of you to design a car just for me."

"Oh, it's not for you. This is mine. See? 'Stark,' right there on the..."

Pepper smiled and came to a stop between his knees. "Right," she said, looking up at the glowing lines of the design which surrounded them and lit her face in blue and orange and white. She gave the design a spin, turning in place to look at it critically this time, and he watched her, the way she knew exactly what she was looking at, even without all the numbers. She frowned. "Will this even be street legal? Tony, this is-"

"Go ahead, it's okay. 'It's genius.' 'It's too generous-'"

"It's ridiculous."

"I'm sorry. That didn't sound anything _like _'extraordinary' or 'selfless' or 'the work of a visionary.'"

"Very astute-"

"Did you even _see _the spoiler-?"

"Yes, I did Tony- I saw- _Tony_! I don't need a car. I have like - three cars."

"At least three-"

"Yes, at _least _three - and I don't need-"

Tony made a face. "Need? Who cares if you need-"

"-three cars and - _I_ care if I need them - _Tony._TONY. Thank you." She put her hands on his shoulders. "Thank you, really. It's too much, and it's genius, and so generous, although you - you obviously amuse yourself making these ridiculous... things and." She paused, peering over his shoulder. "This is impossible."

"The word you're looking for is 'incredible.'"

"No. I mean, Tony, this car is... this is a fake car!"

Tony grinned. She beat on him with a tiny little fist and he laughed. "So what didn't I do?"

"You didn't-" She collapsed onto his lap and spun them both around so she could gaze at his fake masterpiece, gesturing at it. "You didn't keep my birthday present a secret from Bruce."

"I can't keep secrets from Banner. He has those..." Tony waggled his fingers. "Eyes."

"But you can lie to him."

"Oh yeah. Easy."

Pepper pushed back from him to look him in the face. "So what's my real birthday present?"

"Oh, is it really your birthday? I wondered why he kept asking me what I was going to get you."

"What do you think, Mr. Stark?"

"I think... a sarcastic response isn't likely to help me here." Tony grinned, and she grinned back as he stood, sweeping her up in his arms long enough to stand her on her feet. Then he dug around in a bin of parts for a little box.

"Oooh," Pepper said, taking it from him. "A ribbon. Someone went all out."

Tony shrugged. "What can I say? Butterfingers _really_likes you." In the corner, Butterfingers waved an appendage. Tony shook his head minutely at him and the little robot drooped. "I picked out the color though."

She untied the little ribbon, glancing up at Tony in suspicion. But when she pulled the top from the box, she blinked, taken aback. "Tony, I- I don't know what to say."

"You're welcome." He spread his hands out, accepting the praise of his adoring robot fans for a job well-done.

"No. I really - I don't." There was something in her voice though. Something distinctly not gratitude-y. Her expression went slack, just a little disappointed, and Tony frowned. "Tony." She pulled the gift from the wrappings and let them drop to the floor with a little cardboard whuff.

"Tony," she said, holding up the device as evidence. "Did you buy me an iPod?"

"Uh." He leaned forward to inspect it. "No. I _made_you a Stark... something. Name and patent pending." But she didn't apparently think he was cute anymore, so he fell back into his chair and continued work on his "fake" car. "It's top of the line."

"I know," she said, scrolling through the songs. "Sales are up. You were at that meeting- Tony. Did you just-" She blinked at the inventory.

"It's a mixtape," he said into his coffee cup.

"Did you just copy all of my music onto here?"

"What," he said, studying the undercarriage schematic and jabbing a stylus in her direction without looking at her. "You like all of that."

"You copied every song I own, onto here, from _here_?" she said, pulling an actual iPod from her pocket. "Tony."

"You are way more complex and amazing than a mere fourteen song playlist could ever account for. And," he said, nodding sharply at the iPod in question, "that's treason."

"It was a promotional-"

"I could have you keelhauled."

"-from our new acquisition and - keelhauled?"

"You know how I feel about traitors."

Pepper cocked her head. "You're very smooth, Mr Stark. But I think you missed the point of the mixtape. By like, a hundred yards."

"Come on. A hundred?" he said, snagging her hand from where he sat and drawing her in - drawing himself to her really, on his wheelie chair, but still.

"You are supposed to - to pick special songs and-"

"They're all special because you like them."

"-you're supposed to put them in, in order - Special to _us_, Tony - and make them flow into each other, and- The point is-"

"Here we go."

"-you have very little time to show someone you care, so each - each moment is-"

"No, I know, and they are, every single one of them is-"

"Special." They ended the argument the way they often did, nose to nose, having come around to the same conclusion. Or at least the same last word of two different conclusions, because while she wasn't predictable, he knew the payoff if he managed to guess right would be that she forgave him for anything. She was smiling at him again, that patient thing, and then she shook her head and leaned back from him.

"You're unbelievable."

It didn't _always _work.

"Two minutes ago, I was being way too generous."

"Two minutes ago, you were making me a fake car."

Tony spun back to his work and fiddled. "Still am," he piped cheerily. "Mixtapes are vestigial." He made a face. "Who only wants twelve songs when they can have 12,000? Really, you should be annoyed at Jarvis. He did all the - copying."

"I'm not annoyed," she said. She looked up. "I'm not annoyed, Jarvis. Really. Thank you."

"You are most welcome, Miss Potts."

"You sound annoyed," Tony countered. "Jarvis? Annoyed, right?"

"Sir, I-"

"Mute," Pepper said, and Tony gaped.

"That was rude. Jarvis, you don't have to listen to her. She's not your real mom."

She bent down to lace her fingers behind his neck. "Tony. I love you. So I'm going to give you this advice." She kissed him on the ear. "If you _really_ need to make me a mixtape, buy a CD-R, and try harder. You have two weeks until my _actual _birthday to figure it out." She pressed her palm up to his heart and smiled into his soul. "Keep this. In case you want to listen to something that isn't death metal."

She walked away while he sat staring at the prototype mp3 player, admittedly dejected. She was halfway across the room before he swung his chair to waggle the gadget in the air at her. "I'm not afraid to tell everyone you have Rebecca Black on here, you know!"

She didn't turn around.

"Did I at least pick the right color ribbon!"

The door closed with a click and she was up the stairs. Dummy butted up against his shoulder and Tony patted him. "I did, right?" Dummy nodded. "Stop helping."

* * *

"So, how is it. The whole living in Stark Tower thing?" Clint perched - well, Clint always managed to perch. Sofa, rooftop, church pew, lawn chair - but at the moment, he was perched on a stool at a little cafe across from Bruce, _checking in _on him.

"I'm not living there. I'm just staying for a few... months." Bruce grinned. It was nice to have somewhere that could possibly be called a home base. He was just three months from having been in one place for an entire year, and while he had bouts of a surprising kind of wanderlust, he was enjoying at least the appearance of settling in. Tony had set aside two entire floors for him that had before been used for R&D on some car design he'd scrapped, outfitting it with "sciencey stuff" that was less Tony's kind of work and more Bruce's - less tech and more biology. He had a bedroom, and what Tony called a "zen out" room to practice his meditation, although it seemed to function more often as a place to practice his calm while Tony purposefully annoyed him. He even had his own Other Guy-capacity elevator.

There was room for all of them, actually. Bruce had seen the plans. But it had been nine months and at least five mission-things since the events that had drawn them all together, and either the rebuilding was going really slowly or Tony was hesitant about inviting them all into his space. Considering how the man lived - in spurts of energy at a time, keeping odd hours and not always coherent - Bruce didn't blame him. He himself knew what it was to be mad with a project, driven, and allowing others into that mess just invited chaos.

So it was that Clint didn't know about the room set aside for him, about the archery-focused obstacle course, about the eyrie on the roof. "A few months, eh?" Clint said, drinking his coffee.

Bruce unfolded his napkin and spread it over his lap when the girl came out with their tiny portioned meals. "Yeah. I don't know. Maybe longer. Look, Clint. Whatever you need to ask, just ask it."

Clint looked at him, all innocence.

Bruce smiled and looked down into his lap, fiddling with his napkin. "I know you're checking in on me for Fury."

"Fury trusts you."

"About as far as he can throw _him_."

Clint shook his head. "No. He does trust you. But you can't blame a guy for being nervous."

"No, you can't," Bruce agreed grimly. "So? That can't be it. 'How is it, living in Stark Tower?' What do you really want to know?"

Clint leaned in, conspiratorially. "That _is _what I really want to know. Is it crazy? I heard he has killer parties. Girls throwing themselves at the front doors."

Bruce chuckled. "The man has three modes. Working, being Ironman, and partying. Sometimes it's hard to tell them apart, or which he has more fun doing. But yeah. Any excuse."

"Coming from the guy with only two modes-"

Bruce frowned and cleared his throat. "Where _is_Ms. Romanov, anyway? I'd have figured her for baby-sitting duty."

Clint coughed and studied his half a panini carefully. "She's uh..."

Bruce shook his head and pursed his lips. "I can't say I blame her."

"We're a _team. _We're supposed to be, anyway," Clint said, visibly frustrated.

Bruce chuckled. "You've never been chased, hunted by the... Other Guy. I know you want to cut her some slack, and it's okay. Go ahead and stick up for her. She's right to be afraid."

"Nah," Clint said, but he relaxed considerably. "She's not... _afraid_afraid. Just... cautious."

"Like Fury."

"_Yeah. _Like Fury. Listen, Bruce, this isn't about the H - Other Guy," Clint said. "That's not why I'm here."

Bruce looked up, doubtful. "Then why are you here?"

Clint shrugged. "I'm here for … you. You've been out of..." He waved his hand to signify _all of civilization, including cell phones and you know, microwaves and stuff_. "...touch. It could be hard for you to settle in."

"I'm fine. It's been months."

Clint nodded sagely. "Sometimes it takes years."

"Hey," Bruce said, eager to change the subject. "Did you ever hear anything about that reading we picked up at the Tower, the low-level gamma signature?"

Clint rolled with the topic shift. "No, couldn't get a lock with any of our sources. Even your algorithms weren't robust enough." Clint cleared his throat. "No offense."

"None taken," Bruce said, smiling. Always the tiptoeing around him. "Well let me know if you do get anything. We haven't heard a lot-"

"It's classified."

Bruce pursed his lips, nodding at his green salad. "Of course it is."

"If something comes up that's Avengers-level, you'll be the first call we make."

"Sure we will."

"It's not, you, you understand," Clint said, smirking. "It's Stark. That guy'll go after a jay-walker if it means he gets to fly around."

Bruce accused the archer with a cherry tomato on the end of his fork. "You guys are out of your league. First, that man will fly around whether someone's breaking the law or not. Second, he can already read all of your email. He probably knows about stuff before _you_do."

Clint made a face. "Well if you already know what's up, what's with the guilt trip?"

Bruce frowned. "Because it's true. You never call; you never write. Babysitting the green guy doesn't count," he warned, cutting off Clint's gesture at their cafe lunch situation.

"I'm sorry," Clint said, sitting back. "I thought we all had dinner together just last week."

"Pepper set that up."

"So? We all came."

Bruce pulled his napkin from his lap and leaned back, sighing. "I know. I'm sorry. I thought - I don't know what I thought. That we might … Hang out like normal people? Between missions?"

"Hey. I'm more than willing to hang out and play video games or whatever with you guys. I didn't think..."

Bruce frowned. "Tony hasn't invited you over."

"Nope."

"Jesus, we're all twelve year olds. Come over whenever you want. Tell Jarvis I invited you. Tony will be thrilled, I promise."

"I might bring-"

"Go ahead. Bring everyone."

"Because last time-"

"Last time, we were all a little pre-occupied with the latest in a string of assholes trying to pull bullshit in our city. Don't worry about Steve. He knows Tony's not a follower."

"He didn't mean it."

Bruce chuckled. "He meant it. We all mean it at some point. Hey- You ever get a reading on _those_guys?"

"The assholes? Nothing substantial. Led by some guy in a supervillain cape. No pictures, nothing on facial recognition, no obvious threats. Too low-key to be anyone we've seen before."

"But I thought you said the uniforms looked kind of familiar?" While he'd been there, Bruce of course hadn't quite been _there_.

Clint nodded. "But not actually a match for anything. Their leader is probably just a dude trying to be a bad guy who just happened to pick the color green. It's not exactly an inspired choice."

"Hey."

"You're not a bad guy. You don't count."

"Thanks. I think."

"Don't mention it."

"Hey, did Tony remember to invite you to Pepper's birthday party?" At Clint's look, he rolled his eyes. "Of course he didn't."

"There's a party? I wanna go!"

"Well, consider yourself invited. Two weeks from Saturday, 8:00. Just don't tell her. It's a surprise. He's going all out too - celebrities, DJ, different floors with different themes. Oh my god, did I tell you what he's giving her?"

"Oh my god you didn't," Clint mimicked.

"This super fancy car, all decked out with all this..." Bruce waved a hand in the air. "Stuff."

"Science stuff?"

"Technology stuff," Bruce corrected. "I don't even think it has an _engine_."

"A car without an engine. How is that even a car? The engine is the _point _of cars."

"How would you know?"

Clint was indignant into his sandwich. "I can drive!"

"No. Natasha can drive. You can kind of steer."

"I can fly a jet."

"On autopilot."

"You know what? I change my vote. Maybe you are a bad guy."

"Hey! This is _not a vote!_"

* * *

Natasha _was _hero-sitting, just not Banner. "You okay in there, Steve baby?"

"Would you stop calling me that?"

"But you're just so..." Naive, she wanted to say. Be nice, Nat. "Adorable," she decided, rolling her eyes even as she smiled.

Steve pushed out of the dressing room, looking put upon but very put-together. Natasha wolf-whistled. "Wow, Cap. You clean up nice."

Steve half-smiled, blushing. "Thanks." He turned to look at himself in the mirror. "I don't think black is really my color though... I feel like I should be sporting some facial hair and carrying a cane."

Natasha eyeballed him. Like he could grow _facial hair. _"No, I think it's definitely workin' for ya."

"Oh yes!" squealed the personal shopper woman the store had practically shoved at Steve when they'd entered. "Oh my god, it's perfect on you. Let me take you to our fitting guy."

"But I thought it was perfect," Steve hissed at Natasha as he was being dragged away. She grinned at him and then glared at a second woman who was attempting to push skirts at her. "Shoo!"

"Something in red, then, maybe?" the girl tittered and vanished.

Natasha leaned back against the fitting room wall and slid to the ground to wait out Rogers' ordeal with the tailor in peace. Her phone buzzed.

_All good. How's the captain?_

_He hates the color black, pants that wrinkle, and jackets that fit. Otherwise, he's fine,_she tapped back, then dropped her phone into her pocket. It buzzed again, and she ignored it.

And ignored it. And ignored it. Until five minutes of nearly uninterrupted buzzing later, she pulled her phone back out. Clint had texted her seven times, but Coulson had texted her just once.

_Status, agent._

Always so polite.

_With Rogers - we're shopping of all things. Need us?_

Coulson never took more than a few seconds to reply to her, to anyone, unless he meant for the time to elapse. He took nearly thirty seconds to say:

_No._

No? Her phone buzzed again while she was composing a reply that consisted mostly of false-starts but was eventually meant to say: What do you mean, "no."

_Mr. Rogers' signature is missing on some paperwork. Was going to ask you to deliver it._

Nat frowned. _I'll deliver him, instead. One hour?_

_Fine._

"Great."

"What's great?" Steve asked over her shoulder.

Natasha looked up at the Captain, back in his usual tee shirt and jeans. "Nothing," she replied, accepting his hand up and pushing her phone into her pocket. "Wanna go sign some stuff?"

Steve frowned. "Like, for fans?"

"No, you idiot," she said, grinning. "For not getting sued."

"Oh." He blushed.

* * *

"Well, I want eyes on it." Phil Coulson rarely sat when he was on-duty. He hadn't even been sure he had a _desk _before Maria Hill steered him at it and set the nameplate down in front of him, gleaming in engraved gold on a wooden base.

_Phillip J. Coulson._

That had been six months before, when medical had finally allowed him out of bed with instructions not to Do Anything.

Desk Duty. It was a fate worse than... well. "That isn't my concern," he said over the phone. "You have your orders. Yes. Yes. Well I'll be sure to tell him that." Phil hung up.

"Tell me what?" Director Fury asked, knocking lightly on the open door to Phil's office.

"That you're a one-eyed skinny-legged pirate who wouldn't know a level four security threat if it came up and asked to see your-"

"I get the idea," Fury said, waving him off finishing.

"Yes, sir."

"Barton and Romanov report in yet?"

Phil frowned. "Yes. All's quiet, apparently."

"Apparently?"

Phil pursed his lips and reached into a stack of paper, a surprisingly secure method for keeping classified information out of Stark's hands. "There's this."

Fury took the folder, then frowned. "Is this-"

"I don't know, sir.

"How do you even know what I was going to say?"

Phil stood. "Is this a spectro-analysis of an article that may or may not have arrived on Earth in an other-than-Earthly means bearing a signature very close to that of an artifact we have had once in our possession before?"

Fury looked at him. "And?"

"And are we already en route? I don't know, and yes, sir."

"Good." Fury turned to leave.

"Sir-" Phil said. Fury turned back around. "Sir, I wondered if I could-"

Fury silenced him with that _look_he had, but then his face softened. "Clear it with medical."

Phil's heart leapt.

Well, the Hemodynamic Engine for Atrioventricular Redundancies (Tm) in his chest leapt, anyway.

* * *

"I need a tune-up." Phil stood in the doorway to Tony's lab like having broken his passcode and over-ridden Jarvis - or were they just in cahoots? - was no big deal.

Tony stalked toward him with a screwdriver brandished. "How did you get in here? Nevermind. Someone's grounded," he directed at the ceiling. Butterfingers started gesticulating wildly in the corner. "Not you. Stop it. Okay, yes, you're grounded. You're all grounded. And you," he said, stopping close enough to Phil to tap his chest just once with the screwdriver. "Are a sight for sore eyes. Really. I'm serious. When'd you get parole?" He wheeled away and gestured that Phil should follow him over to the little chair he used for himself when running diagnostics and testing upgrades.

Phil quirked a wan smile before sitting. "Medical was finally allowed to put me through the paces." He shrugged. "I didn't pass."

Tony frowned. "Didn't pass like, you hadn't studied-?"

"Nothing like that," Phil said, blithely guessing the serious question in Tony's sarcasm. It was irritating. "Here." He handed Tony - or tried to - a manila file folder - Tony was wrangling a rolling worktop that You had gotten himself tangled up in and waved Phil off with some distaste. The man did not _learn._

"Just drop it-"

"Right," Phil said, smiling grimly. "I remember."

"Uh huh," Tony said, clamping the rolly-table into place. He turned to squint at the agent and picked up the folder. "What else do you remember?"

"I've seen the security footage-"

"Did you see the bit where I almost shot a hole into your boss?"

Phil nodded, smiling for real. "I did."

"He's lucky," Tony said, plopping down into a chair and spinning to activate the remote 3D computer display. He swiped through screens. "You don't even want to know how Banner reacted. You'd think finding out your buddy is alive after all would be _good_news."

"That wasn't in the file."

Tony grinned at him. "I know. I'm saving it for a special occasion."

Phil raised his brows. "Good to know. Listen, Mr. Stark,-"

"Tony, please. It's been like - at least three years. And I've literally been inside of your chest. I think we can drop the formalities."

"Tony," Phil corrected. "I need to thank you."

Tony jabbed the screwdriver at him without looking up from his workspace construction. "No you don't. You managed to single-handedly get Stark Medical off the ground in three days, which got _me_ in good with the CEO of Stark Industries, so I figure _I_ owe _you _at least like, a really great cigar." He sat back in his chair then, smiling.

"I don't smoke."

"No one smokes cigars. It's the taste- Listen, I'll tell you what. Dinner. Let's do it. A big rare coronary-inducing steak."

Phil gazed at him patiently.

"Okay, you are officially no fun. Unbutton your shirt and lay back for me."

"Certainly."

Phil didn't even watch as Tony stuck electrodes to his chest, just looked up at the ceiling and gave off the impression that not only did he implicitly trust Tony, but that he was having quite a nice time enjoying his internal elevator music. He could have been lying on the hood of a car in the middle of a country road at night looking at the stars. Tony could only watch him from the corner of his eye for a moment before all of his attention was on getting things properly situated so that the better of the two scenarios played out: either Tony did it right and Phil got his ticker tuned up without incident, or he did it wrong and Phil went into cardiac arrest. Dummy was on standby with the AED just in case.

"There we go," Tony muttered, running the instrument he lovingly referred to as "glowy wand" over Phil's chest. He watched the numbers take a decided dip, tested the possibly-faulty conjunction a couple of more times to be sure, and then marked an x at the spot with a purple marker. It was, fortunately, at least half an inch from the glossy scar that had made the hasty but brilliant invention of the H.E.A.R.(Tm) necessary in the first place; scar tissue inhibited Tony's ability to manipulate the device from outside of Phil's sensitive and delicate inside parts. "Output's a little low, but it's functional as-is. Stable. You sure you want the race car tune-up?"

"Yep."

Tony readied the little device that he'd developed for after-surgery adjustment - a little dentist's tool looking thing with a very powerful, very tiny magnet that engaged with a switch and could be tuned to any of fifty-six little adjustable H.E.A.R.(Tm) parts. "Last chance."

"I'm on a clock, doc."

"Okay. This might sting." Tony made eye contact with Phil, just in case of take-backsies, but there were none. He flipped the switch, Phil winked closed one eye and gritted his teeth as Tony adjusted the relay that had been slightly out of alignment, and then Tony switched the thing off again. Phil let out all of his breath with a whoosh and took a moment while Tony ran the glowy wand over him again to check that the numbers ran properly. When Tony nodded, Phil sat up and pulled his shirt closed.

"Thanks," he said, buttoning up.

"Don't mention it," Tony replied, offering a hand to haul Phil to his feet. "Seriously, don't." Tony turned to start unclamping the tables. "I can't have every guy with a Stark Industries brand organ showing up here for tune-ups."

"Cross my heart."

"Already did that," Tony said, grinning and tossing the marker at Phil.

Phil caught it without effort, snatched the thing right out of the air without even looking. Then he _did_look, and pursed his lips. He tossed it back into Tony's hands and smoothed his tie over his shirt. "Thank you, Mr. Stark. Now if you'll excuse me-"

"Study hard, Agent," Tony said, sitting back into his chair. Coulson made his way out, and somehow Tony felt even more grumbly than when he'd shown up. Phil was different, and it was all to do with the shiny _scar_ from the wound that had _literally killed him_less than a year previous. And none of them had been able to stop bickering long enough to be ready when Loki had made his move, and god who needed a drink?

Or maybe Phil was just irritated because Tony'd picked up a _permanent _marker, but whatever. A drink still sounded _great._

Oh, shit.

Tony ran for the lab door, up the stairs, down the hall and toward the elevator, catching Phil with a hand in the doors. "Wait, Agent. I have to invite you-"

"Ms. Potts' birthday party. Dr. Banner invited me. I might have to take a pass, but I'll be there if I can."

Tony paused, deflated. "Oh. Good. As you were, then."

The doors started to close, and this time stayed open because Phil stuck _his_hand out to hold them open. "Mr. Stark - Tony. Thanks." He smiled, the doors closed, and Tony whistled all the way back to his lab.

* * *

Pepper Potts was a patient person. She thought she was patient. She'd been dealing with Tony Stark for years and then with _Tony_ for about a year and a half, and she didn't just persevere through it, she _enjoyed_ it. Tony was 2 am and coffee grounds, the wilds of alcoholic recklessness and honesty, the pinpoint accuracy of haphazard genius which ricocheted here and there but - eventually - always _always_found its mark.

And she liked 2 am, she liked sleeping through it, she liked waking up and realising he wasn't there next to her, she liked making him a fresh pot and going down to bother him. She liked playing put-upon because he liked putting upon as long as he knew she wasn't actually mad at him. He liked pushing the boundaries and finding that she still loved him afterward, and she liked that spark of surprise in him when he found that she was constant.

She didn't like the wilds of alcoholic recklessness, but she loved the honesty, and she appreciated the window into him, the proof that he cared what people thought of him or his company, his mark on the world. And she noted how sincere his _I love yous _were when his breath stank of scotch - it matched when he was sober and that mattered.

As for the genius? It certainly created spectacle, and Tony thought it was what made him special. That alone made it something about him that she loved, because she loved to see him wrong about things.

Perhaps it was easier to love him when she was standing with him, when they were laughing because he was always looking for the joke, the way to make her smile, even when he missed the mark. But she was in Malibu only a week after he'd given her his sad excuse for a birthday gift, clearly having remembered only what month it was in and not the day - but that was better than years past, when she'd had to remind him and buy herself something from him. It had become a joke, which was the only reason, probably, that she didn't _really_ care that he'd forgotten her actual birthdate _again._ It helped that she'd found an envelope delivered to her office by messenger three days after explaining the concept of "mix tape" to Tony, addressed to _Miss Virginia Potts_ all proper, containing a CD-R labelled _Play me. _She had.

She'd left it on all day.

And then she'd forgotten to bring it to Malibu.

Pepper flipped through the channels, sprawled indecently on the sofa in Tony's Malibu beach home. Thinking about Tony, because the man took up a lot of space in her brain, he was just so _much_. And the distance made it easier to remember that he was a celebrity. News outlets reported on his business decisions from years past like they were still relevant. Entertainment channels reported on his suits and girls and on her, and they all made her out to be - okay, brilliant - but also either some kind of domineering witch or the placating sort who said yes to all of Tony's whims.

In his dreams, maybe.

It was easy to hate him from that distance, in an academic way.

"No," she said into her phone, still flipping through the channels. Estelle was a vapid sort of friend, nice enough and cared about what happened in Pepper's life, but Pepper had basically just written a book about Tony Stark in her head while Estelle went on about a handbag; she didn't exactly take up a lot of Pepper's processing power. Now she was asking about Tony, ever the gossip. "Just me this time. But I'll mention it; Tony misses Malibu. He'll take any excuse to come out."

"_Oh my god, turn to channel 6. Are you seeing this?"_

"What?" Pepper changed the channel obediently. A reporter lit up in bright light reported from New York City, which was a dark staccato skyline against the pollution-red sky in the East Coast style. Weird. "Blackout?" She laughed. "Tony must be crowing. He'll be the only light in town until they get the grid back up."

Estelle laughed along with her, but Pepper's grin faded with a slow realization. No blackout took out _all _of the light in the city. Cars, for example. And that jagged spear in the near distance, just behind the reporter - was Stark Tower.

Dark.


	3. Error Code Error

**TRICKSTER**

**Chapter 3**

**Error Code Error**

"Pick up pick up pick up...!" Tony wasn't picking up. He wasn't picking up and the tower was dark, and that meant it wasn't the city's grid that had gone down, it was _everything_ and Tony was part of that everything and so was everything in his house that protected him and everything in his chest that kept him alive. She tried and failed to get him on the phone one more time before hanging up and scrolling through for Natasha Romanov's (Natalie Rushman's) phone number.

"Jarvis, wake up please," she said, trying for calm as she scrolled and muttered affirmations at herself.

"Yes, Ms Potts."

"Can you find Tony? What's his schedule for tonight?"

There was a pause. "Master Stark is scheduled to appear at a charity function on Long Island this evening."

"Thank you, Jarvis. Can you- do you know where?"

"Ms Potts-" And Jarvis hesitated. Sometimes he just sounded so human, when he was concerned for Tony, when he was concerned for _her_. "-I should say that I have lost contact with Stark Tower entirely."

"You're-you-"

"I cannot access any of my memory banks from Stark Tower at all."

The phone in her hand rang and Natasha's face on the caller ID interrupted her before she could scream in frustration. She hit Answer instead and transferred the call to the screen at her desk behind the sofa, so that she could start hitting the chatter sites for news of Tony.

"Ms. Romanov," she answered, initiating a skype call to Happy and willing him to be awake and to pick up dammit. It binged into the ether; she muted the TV and found another channel to put into the picture in picture for another perspective, _any_ perspective which showed the blackout of New York City to be a hoax.

"Where is he?" Natasha said, all-business.

Pepper was not all-business, she was all-crisis; she'd been through a lot with Tony and he had an unsurprising number of enemies. They had left "all-business" years ago. "He hasn't left for Brussels - he was supposed to leave for Brussels in the morning, but Jarvis says tonight he was scheduled to be at a charity function. I'll text you the address. He could be home by now. Or he could be in Long Island. He's at least in the city. I don't know."

"I'm heading there right now with Clint. ETA fifteen minutes."

"I'm on a plane in twenty," Pepper said. "Happy!"

Happy's face appeared on the screen beside Natasha Romanov's picture, alert but rubbing sleep from his eyes. "Yeah, boss," he slurred.

"I need the jet prepped. I'll be there in 20."

"Boss?"

"Channel 6."

Happy turned the television on while he was fumbling out of bed, and then cursed roundly. "On it," he said, pulling pants on. His image went black as the call cut off and Pepper took a deep breath.

"Keep me in the loop," she said to Natasha. "I'll be there in..." She flailed a hand, already shoving things into a bag. "Five hours, give or take."

"Push it," Natasha said. "Get here. I don't like this."

* * *

Natasha hung up the phone and turned her attention to the front screen of the jet. "She's in Malibu. Says Stark was due in Long Island tonight."

"It's 2 am," Clint said, his own phone to his ear.

Natasha shrugged and connected a second call. "It's a start, anyway. Sir, I've texted you the address of a possible location on Stark. Send a team. Call in Thor. We're headed to the tower."

Clint hung up when he got voicemail and redialed. "Why the tower?" he said.

Natasha listened for confirmation, then flipped her phone closed. "Stark Tower isn't on the grid. If whoever did this made it a point to take it out, then we have to assume Stark is the target, and if Stark is the target and the tower's out, then they've gone after him there." She nodded at the phone against his hear. "Any bead on the Doc?"

Clint shook his head, flipping his phone closed. He followed her gaze out the window, where the uncharacteristically dark New York City skyline loomed like the remains of an abandoned one-night-only event, coming up large as Natasha ran their jets dry getting them in. "No answer. At a time like this, he goes AWOL?"

Natasha growled in her throat. It was hot. "Banner can go where he wants," she ground out, irritated but ever the pragmatist.

"Sure. I'm just saying, it's inconvenient."

Natasha frowned at him.

"Or... it's completely convenient?" he realized with a groan. "Someone tempted Banner away with... what, a girl with a story about a sick dad?"

Natasha didn't rise to the bait. "Or a sick anyone, or Dr Ross, or anything gamma-related."

"Gamma-related," Clint muttered. "He was asking about those readings he asked us to check into. I didn't have any info for him."

"They were too trace for us to track," she remembered. "You think he got a hit?"

"Right when Stark Tower goes dark? Either he was intentionally fed the information, or someone had ears on him and came in after he'd left."

"Ears on Stark Tower," Natasha said, shuddering as she dropped the jet neatly onto the rooftop landing pad of said ugly spire. "Hate to meet the guy who could manage that."

The tower was dark inside and out. Their flashlights swung around in the dark, but Clint was sure Natasha could navigate by sound, memory, and reflexes if she had to. The upper floor was Tony straight through - a bar that danced with glittering glass bottles of amber when their lights swept over them; a long low couch that smelled of leather; a huge flat-screen TV just hanging on the wall like anyone ever came up to the top floor just to watch television.

"Come on," Natasha said.

Clint jogged to catch up. She hadn't stopped to observe, or maybe she was just faster about it; either way, she was already at the emergency stairs which - thank god someone had convinced Tony it was illegal not to have them in a building this tall, because even if he never thought he'd lose power, there could have been like, a fire or something-

"You know where you're going?" he whispered three floors later.

"Banner's lab. One more floor down."

"How do you know where Bruce's lab is?"

"I know where everything is in this building." She stopped to frown at him. "Don't you?"

"Uh. Yeah. Just checking. You know."

"Right," she said with a grin, just barely lit up in the edge of his flashlight before she forged on ahead of him again.

Bruce's lab was - obviously - dark, but glass shone against their whisking lights, undisturbed except for-

Clint tapped Natasha, but she was already frozen. A moment later, she said: "Good to see you, Cap. You could have called."

"No I couldn't," Rogers said, coming into her flashlight beam for a moment. He ducked out again, kneeling. Clint's light followed him to a body on the floor. "My phone stopped working. I … might have forgotten to plug it in."

In an instant, Natasha was at his side, and Clint had faded back with his flashlight off, and bow out, just in case - watching. "You didn't forget. It was taken out," she was saying, and then: "Banner? How?"

In her reflected light, Rogers shrugged. "I found him like this. I was already on my way to the tower when all the lights went out. Like a wave of... something. Took my bike out, and every car around me. What kind of weapon does that?"

Natasha growled. "We gotta get down to Stark's lab, _now_."

"Wait," Rogers said. "We've got an injured man and no plan. I assume SHIELD sent you here."

Natasha nodded.

"Radio work?"

She nodded again.

"Radio in. Banner's stable. Tell Coulson he's here in the 42nd floor lab, out cold, and that we're going after Stark."

"What if he wakes up while we're gone?" Clint asked. "Won't he be... you know. Upset?"

Rogers worried his lip. "Natasha, stay with Banner."

Clint watched her. To Rogers, it probably looked like she was considering all of the options, and that wasn't wrong, but Clint could tell by the one little line in the middle of her forehead that there was concern in play that wasn't tactical. "I'll do it," he said.

Rogers frowned. "I need you-"

"You need Natasha," Clint said. "I can stand guard duty. If there are hostiles in the area, and they're after Stark, you'll need her."

"No, it's fine," Natasha said, then she stood from checking on Bruce to look at Clint and he thought maybe - a hint of irritation salted with gratitude. "If there are hostiles in the area, you'll be alone if you stay here. You need to go with Cap and stay in the shadows."

"I'm not breakable, Nat," Clint started, and they both knew _that_ was true, because it'd been tried several times, and she herself had had personal experience with how difficult it was to kill him. But she cut him off-

"I know. But there's a place you can do the most good, and that's covering Cap without being seen."

Clint frowned at her, but when she was determined, she was strong like bull. "Fine."

Rogers watched them, unamused. "Oh good, you're caught up," he said quietly, and turned to go.

And Rogers _sarcastic_ wasn't something he ever thought he'd see, so Clint padded along behind him and decided against saying anything about how much Stark was apparently rubbing off on him.

* * *

The sun shone. The ragged flags of a burnt but now rebuilding citadel flapped in the crisp breeze. Thor Odinson strode through the long, broad corridor which blazed with sunlight it had never known before the enemy of Loki Odinson his brother had torn through their land and home and stones and towers looking for him.

"But _is_ this creature Loki's enemy?" Sif said, keeping pace with him.

"You do not want my company, Sif," Thor warned.

"No. I do not," she agreed, then halted him with a hand on his arm and spun him to her. "For you are not this Thor before me, blind to the counsel of his friends, to the wisdom of his father."

Thor shook his head. "What Thor shall I be then? For you? That one who would have broken a long peace for pride? That one who watched his brother fall into the deepest abyss and did not dive after him? The Thor you seek would break a promise to his brother, would forget the fear in his eyes as he swore it to me, forget it and say that we are all better off." He smiled. "But I am not that Thor, and be grateful for it. I will come to the aid of those I love."

Sif sighed. "Stubborn fool."

Thor grinned. "To the last."

His father was not quite so easy. He recognized what little Thor had learned of the silvered tongue from Loki during his imprisonment and all of their lives before then, and cut him off, just as he had every day since Loki's disappearance. Days after the strange alien troops had attempted to lay waste their city, Loki had appeared to him, just once, hair askew and pale as death - it had to have been purposeful, for Loki's illusions were always just as he'd meant them to appear. It was a sign to him, a sign of distress, a plea for assistance. Thor thought he saw Loki's mouth form the word _brother_ and he called out to Loki, _Midgard! my brother, I will meet you in Midgard!_ before Loki's form abruptly vanished and Thor was instead staring at the dark warm close nothing of his bedroom.

"A dream," Odin said, seated on the throne. "You are needed here, my son. We are preparing to retrieve the Tesseract from where your fool of a brother sent it. If you truly wish to find him, you will go with the hunting party to Niflheim-"

"A waste of time."

"We have word from Heimdall-"

"If the Tesseract is in Niflheim, so be it. I will join the party there, but _after_ I retrieve Loki from Midgard."

Odin stood and descended the steps to lay a hand on Thor's shoulder. Never had it lain so heavy there as it had these long last days of refusal.

"He said he never wanted the throne," Thor said quietly.

"I know he didn't," Odin replied. He sighed and looked out of the windows over the expanse of Asgard. "Loki has stolen the Tesseract away to a land of ice and mist, where he knows we cannot easily follow. It is best you understand that, my son. It grieves me to see you in pain."

"So you refuse me. Again."

His father said nothing, only walked away from him, slowly, stately - and, it struck Thor, bowed with age.

"He's right," Fandral said, coming out of the alcove to walk with Thor to the banquet hall. "Loki has ever been a master of mindplay. His promises to you ensure that you will not hasten to condemn him, even while it is obvious to all else that he and this … _dwarf_ have been in league all along."

"You're wrong," Thor said. "And I will not rest until - "

"Thor!" Volstagg rushed toward them with Hogun on his heels, both armed. "Thor!"

"My friends?"

"Word from Heimdall. Midgard has called for you."

Thor blinked. He had been using the Tesseract for visits to Midgard when Heimdall's eye spotted their signal for him, but since it had gone missing, he hadn't been able to join them in their battles. He hadn't supposed that Heimdall was still performing that task, but it was a good excuse. He grinned wide and turned on his heel to follow after his father.

* * *

"What were you doing on your way to the tower?" Barton asked.

Steve frowned around in the semi-dark. Barton had managed to keep quiet for two floors worth of stairs and he figured that was something, anyway. "Shh."

"There's no one in here, Cap. I'd know."

Steve blew out a breath. "All the same-"

"Okay. Have it your way."

"My way-? We aren't having this conversation now, Barton. It's not the time or the place."

"I'm just saying," Barton continued, apparently _not_ allowing Steve to have his way, "you clearly weren't prepared for this." Steve felt Barton's flashlight sweep up and down him, naked of his shield and suit, in only jeans - torn now from his bike going out from under him - and tee shirt. He tsked. "Weren't you a Boy Scout?"

Steve forged ahead. Stark's lab was happily located only nine floors from where they'd found Banner, just below the bank of ten labs allocated for research and development - an eleventh glassed-in, highly secure place Steve wasn't even sure they'd be able to get into when they found it. Barton badgered him and chattered, but quieted immediately and readied his bow when they came upon the 33rd floor stairwell door. Steve clicked off his flashlight and counted down with a fist, and Barton had disappeared by the time Steve had gotten down to one and kicked the door in.

To silence and more darkness.

Steve moved through the space, reaching out with every sense, every faculty. No sound, no strange objects or dark shadows backlit with the stars out of the windows - but he was painfully aware now how little he knew about what was normal in Stark's world. The doors slid open at his touch, the locks having been disengaged, and he thought Tony would have had a failsafe in case of power loss for that. He tried to detect anything out of place, anything odd, but what did he know? The scent of hydraulic fluid, the flash burn feel of chemical in the air? Were those a sign of intrusion, or were they just the most recent fits and starts of the genius of Tony Stark, destined to fail spectacularly or change the world? Steve found he had no idea at all.

He had been on his way to the tower to rectify that, or start to. Stark was a lone gunman on his more contrary days, and those were impossible to predict. But they _were_ a team, and someone had to be the grownup, and it was _never_ going to be Tony Stark. And anyway, Steve felt bad about what he'd said.

Because it wasn't true, or it was. He'd been so irritated, he couldn't now remember whether he'd said Tony was or _wasn't_ just like his old man. He could hear himself saying either to him:

"You're just like Howard," he'd have said when Tony insisted on doing his own thing, "Too prideful for your own good and putting the rest of us at risk for it. How many people are you willing to step over to look like a hero?"

Or if Stark had been too reckless with himself, drinking, partying, saying screw it all, ending up on the news -

"You are nothing like Howard. Don't you have any respect for yourself at all? If not yourself, at least have some respect for us."

Whatever he'd said - he couldn't dredge up the memory at all, just heard them both ringing around his head because he'd thought them often enough but always _always_ held his tongue - he couldn't forget the look on Stark's face. Cheerful enough, but with that certain intensity in every line of his face, when he was about to walk out, when he thought he'd been proven right about you, when he thought he'd caught you - this expression that meant _I knew it_ and _you betrayer_.

And when he walked out, he took the room with him, because you always just felt like you'd got the wrong end of the tongue-lashing, even if he didn't say anything at all. And this time, this _particular_ time, the others had looked at Steve like he'd crossed a line, and whatever he'd said, whatever it was - it had been about Howard and that was... it was just plain wrong. He hadn't even really ever known Howard the way everyone else thought he did, never had a clue the man cared as much as he apparently had, so he couldn't say why he thought he had any right to compare Tony and Howard in the first place - and he was supposed to be the leader of this somewhat piecemeal team and he'd had _plenty_ of experience at that, enough to know that everyone had a line at which joking - or even the serious reprimand - became something destructive and unhelpful and _mean_ and Steve was very good at finding that line and leaving it alone, because he made knowing his men a priority. But Tony Stark was good at pushing that boundary, and he was a man unlike others, difficult to figure out. Steve got the idea from Miss Potts that Stark made it a game to find that other line in people, and routinely pushed people to find his.

She had given him plenty of notice too. Miss Potts didn't wait for something to blow up before fixing it, and she knew Stark better than probably anyone ever _wanted_ to. She'd pulled Steve aside after that first mission, given him hell for saying what - probably Bruce told her - Steve had said to him in the lab on the helicarrier, waved away the excuse on his tongue - that it was Loki, Loki and that staff, and he hadn't meant - and she'd told him in calm, sweet, icy tones that she'd better not ever hear that sort of thing coming from someone who is supposed to be watching Tony's back, because, she said, _You have_ no _idea. Thank you for your time, Captain Rogers. Happy will see you out._

Holy cow, what a woman.

So when he pushed the glass door aside that should have been locked, when no lights alerted Stark to his presence, when no red flash told him he wasn't allowed - when the place remained dark and no Jarvis spoke to him out of nowhere - he barely registered it as abnormal except that everything he _did_ know about the man suggested those things should happen.

"He's not here," Barton said.

"No, he's not."

"No one's here."

"But there's no sign of a struggle, either," he said.

Barton clicked his flashlight on and swung it around just to be sure. "How can you tell?" he said, wondering over the mess that littered the desktops.

Steve moved to investigate it. The "mess" was actually little piles of machined parts, numbered, and a face plate from Stark's suit with some measurements etched onto it. Off the end of the desk, on the floor, _was_ a mess, but it looked like it had fallen there from - ah, there. From the ceiling hung an apparatus with lines of wire running to it and a coil at the end. Clearly some sort of... device from which something heavy could be hung, something which released as soon as power to the building had been cut. "I just can," he replied.

"One sec, Nat," Barton murmured, fishing around in his vest pocket. He came out with an earpiece for Steve, and when he'd fitted it into his ear, Steve said: "Go ahead, Widow."

"I think you guys better get up here."

By the time they'd made it back up to the top floor where Natasha had directed them, the emergency lights had begun to flicker on. In the low light, the entrance to Stark's bedroom suite was visible, but recessed in a nook on the other side of an expansive bookshelf filled with bottles and books and movies, it was easy to see how they'd missed it.

Of course Tony Stark would keep his personal quarters on the top floor, with all the windows and amazing views.

The low emergency lighting illuminated a kitchenette that, but for the recently rinsed blender pieces drying in the drying rack, looked unused, connected to a sunken living room that boasted yet another very large screen television. A wall panel situated at the boundary between living room and kitchen began to glow with a tentative, angelic light - blue around a faint red alert, an alarm, security breach, danger, error code error too late, too late.

"In here," Natasha called, and Steve and Barton practically raced toward her, down the small hall to a bedroom, Stark's bedroom.

The low lights hadn't come up in the bedroom yet, but the wall panel next to the bed glowed that same warning, error, alarm that the one in the living room had, illuminating in eerie relief the scene. A book on the bedside table, ribbon bookmark a quarter through. No photos on the walls, one painting. Bookshelves of reference material. The bed made - so he hadn't been asleep when... whatever had happened had happened. He hadn't been helpless.

There was a little desk in the room, no paper or pen, but a display that crackled with small sparks as the power attempted to come back on. It wouldn't restart, Steve could see that. It had been broken, the first sign of a struggle. Steve started toward it, and kicked something at his feet.

The glass rolled until it bumped into the edge of the rug that framed Stark's bed. The smell was familiar - that nauseating wheat grass chlorophyll vodka concoction Stark drank when he wasn't actively on duty, and sometimes when he was. Splashed across the polished wood floor like blood, but it wasn't, definitely wasn't.

No. No, the blood was some feet away, a brief spatter that signaled possibly a broken nose but importantly did _not_ signal a gunshot or severe blunt force trauma or stab wound.

"Dammit."


	4. Whisper Trail

_[Hi everyone. I'm so sorry it took me so long to get this out. In apology, this chapter is exceedingly long. I hope that it meets your expectations. Enjoy!]_

**Trickster  
Chapter 4**  
**Whisper Trail**

_[24 miles south of Vang Vieng, Laos]_

Phil Coulson surveyed the location from his perch above it. The bowl, as they'd been calling it, was a natural formation, not a crater caused by the impact of falling debris or, say, a gamma-infused interdimensional energy cow an alien god had taken from them nearly a year previous. ("Absolutely not a crater," he had been assured by the local meteorological expert, a gnarled old man whose meteorological credentials included Having Lived In the Area For Quite Some Time and My Goats Love This Area Of Scrabblegrass Best.)

Their search for the object that had somehow come to earth couldn't be classified a failure. Not yet. He'd only been there a week, afterall, and the advance team had been there for two. He'd have to keep hunting down the elusive gamma trail for another two weeks at least before he could sign off on the paperwork that declared Site F a non-starter. When he wasn't personally overseeing the sifting of the bowl's contents - an old burial site, perhaps, filled with bones and ceremonial artifacts - he spent his time gathering anecdotal evidence from the locals.

"So," he said, and the translator started jabbering away, and the junior agent at Phil's elbow started taking notes, and it was altogether less interesting than virtually anything else in the world. Goats, dirt, blue waters, magnificent cave formations. He didn't mind it at all, as a lifestyle, but it wasn't a helicarrier and a modest, clean suit and a prim assortment of documents neatly filled in and a range and a target full of precision shots. It wasn't working toward the betterment of mankind or the protection of earth or the gathering of forces or taking a stand or losing his life.

His phone binged. The translator stopped mid-stream and put a hand to his pocket. The goat-herder startled, and then put his hand into his pocket.

"It's me," Phil said, and the other two grumbled and put their own phones away. "Coulson."

"_You're being recalled."_

"Yes, sir," Phil replied, running scenarios. His first thought was, as usual, that Stark had finally gone rogue. Reports from the sector often enough included detailed accounts of Stark being a reckless yahoo, and more often than he liked included public arguments between Captain America and Ironman - but going there was more habit than real worry anymore, if it ever was. No, Mr Stark - _Tony _- had earned his trust, mostly by having been responsible for Phil's continued alive status, but more generally by being the victim of an incredible amount of blame-laying and still coming out smiling and making sarcastic remarks. It'd take something monumental to turn Stark.

Something like a tragedy befalling another Avenger, or god forbid, Ms. Potts.

"Additional information?" he requested.

"_Whisper trail, Agent."_

Fine. Hush hush was right in his wheel house. "I've gotta go," he said to the translator. "Thank you for your cooperation." He bowed to the herdsman, turned on his heel and stopped only a moment in the HQ tent to give some final instructions before meeting the helicopter that was already landing.

* * *

_[Unknown location]_

Tony woke up and immediately suppressed a groan. He hadn't even opened his eyes yet and already he could tell that he wasn't just passed out on the floor. For one, he didn't feel hung over enough for that. For another, and wasn't that weird, nothing _smelled _right. Earthy, woody, dirt, shitty cologne - where there should have been either motor oil, electric burn, acrid smoke from a welding torch, or hey, linen soft vaguely floral divinely clean Pepper smell. No, earthy woody dirty cheap man wasn't anywhere on his list of Places He Might Sometimes Wake Up.

And whoops, okay, that was a strange sense of cold right in the middle of his chest, a lightness he hadn't felt since - well, he felt it a lot, and now he recognized it and well shit.

Before he opened his eyes, he did some practical calculations. Without the arc reactor keeping things going apace - ha ha - he had little time. He did this math every morning, had done it ever since Yinsen had explained the details, since he had to start counting the seconds between changeovers when the palladium cores wore themselves out. The math always came out right, and usually he considered his reactor-less time a reason to celebrate. Started at a week, then became six days twenty three hours, and so on, whittled away by traitors and bad cores or what have you. Always enough time to concoct a new fix, with his track record of pulling off miracles. The light trying to pour through his eyelids told him he'd already lost a day. Goddammit, a whole goddamn day.

Tony opened his eyes, finally.

"Huh." What he saw cheered him, if only sort of and in a "but what the fff-" kind of way. "This is the creepiest game of 'This is Your Life' ever," he muttered, grasping the wires hooked into the baseplate of the casing his arc reactor was _supposed _to fit into. He willed his heart to slow down and followed the wiring with his gaze and fumbling fingers to a car battery, nice and familiar.

"Well shit-"

"Like it?"

Tony looked up, viscerally disgusted. "What do you want, Hammer?"

* * *

_[Stark Airfield, just outside New York City, NY]_

Five and a half hours after stepping onto the jet, Pepper Potts stepped off with Happy at her heels carrying her overnight bag and laptop. Happy already had his hand up, gesturing sharply at his own assistant who'd pulled the car in for them. The kid pulled to a screeching stop, having apparently surmised the haste of the situation, and was pulling open the trunk by the time they reached him. He took the bags from Happy while Happy got the door for Pepper, and only had time to say, "Ma'am, you should know-" before Pepper froze, mid-seating herself. She eased into the seat with grace, and then said, "Excuse me. SHIELD, right?"

"How could you tell?" the junior agent asked. "It's the suit, isn't it?"

"Yep." Pepper looked out of the window, fiddling with her phone. Still no text from Tony, no word from Natalie. She shook her head in wonder. "If you people are involved in this-" she started, under her breath, but he heard her anyway.

"I assure you, ma'am, we're just as concerned as you are."

She put her phone down and looked at him as Happy got into the front. "I want you to tell me everything you know - Happy, SHIELD HQ. Right?" she asked.

The junior agent nodded with an awkward smile. "That's right."

Pepper waited. "Well? Everything you know. Right now."

"That's ah... Well. Someone else will be able to explain when we get there," he said.

He was holding back. She knew when someone was lying, and this guy was _lying_. But he looked like he was about to wet himself just sitting next to her and she just thought, _oh please _and turned to face front. She wanted to be pacing, she wanted to be striding purposefully, but instead she was sitting, hands in her lap cradling her phone that might at any moment bing with a message from Tony laughing at everyone for getting so worried.

Happy opened the car door for Pepper outside the unassuming entrance to SHIELD HQ, and when he handed her the laptop case, she put a hand on his arm and leaned in. "Maybe take a look around the tower," she murmured.

Happy glanced over the roof of the car at the agent who was waiting to escort her. "You sure?"

Pepper nodded. "I'm sure."

"You're the boss."

The junior agent led her, joined by three other agents, through the non-descript outer offices into the tunnels. With her clearance, she'd been through the tunnels, but only just. Enough to be allowed into the infirmary on those not-as-rare-as-she'd-like occasions Tony'd been hurt beyond a little banged up. The agents swept her right past where they'd have normally turned off toward the infirmary and she breathed a little sigh of relief. The walls got more and more white and institutional the further they went, and she was getting more and more worried about what that foretold. Higher security hospital? Prison? Had they found him? Had he... done something? The junior agent stopped in front of a room with a table and chair in it, with a mirror along one side - a two-way mirror, she was certain - but it was empty, so Tony hadn't been arrested.

The junior agent opened the door and gestured her into it. But he didn't follow her, instead closed the door behind her and locked it from the outside.

_What in the-_

"Ms. Potts," said a voice. The lights went on in the adjoining room and the mirror went transparent. On the other side of the glass sat Director Fury, Captain America, Hawkeye, and Natalie Rushman.

"Where's Tony?"

They didn't say anything, just looked at each other.

"I demand to know what's going on here," she said breathlessly. She pull the chair over to the glass but did not sit, preferring to pace.

Director Fury was the first to look her in the face. "You called Agent Romanov when Stark Tower went down-"

"Where. Is. Tony."

"He's gone," Captain Rogers said, somber.

"And you aren't looking for him because?"

"We are," Fury said. "You called Agent Romanov-"

"It was on the news."

"We know. I'd like you to tell us what you were doing at the time."

"I was on the phone with a friend. You can't possibly believe that I-"

"That friend's name?"

"What?" She looked at Natalie. "Natalie, please-"

"We're investigating all possibilities, Ms. Potts," Natalie said, not without some kindness. _Natasha_, Pepper suddenly remembered. Not Natalie, Natasha. An agent, and not her assistant, not the eager woman who so pleased Tony but took care of Pepper's affairs like a professional, an equal who just happened to do the things Pepper didn't have time for after becoming CEO. An agent who had been spying on her, on _Tony _for reasons she suspected weren't solely to determine his suitability for the Avengers Initiative.

"Estelle Brinson," Pepper said, pacing. "But I'm telling you, I had nothing to do with this. How could you even think-"

"There's a secure connection between Mr. Stark's home in Malibu and Stark Tower in New York, isn't there, Ms. Potts."

Pepper met Fury's eye. "Yes." Oh, wait. "But when I asked Jarvis to check on Tony's calendar last night, after seeing the - on the news - Jarvis said he'd lost all communications with the Tower."

"The power outage," Clint said.

"But he didn't know if Tony had gone to an event that was on his schedule - he should have known that - he should have had access to anything that happened before the outage."

"Mr. Stark never showed up to that event," Natasha said. "In fact, he never RSVPed and wasn't expected."

"Okay..." Pepper stopped, trying to calm herself and _think_. So he didn't go to an event he'd been invited to. That was nothing new. Maybe he'd been planning to surprise them, so he hadn't RSVPed, but then he'd gotten tied up with a project, so he didn't go anyway, and since he hadn't RSVPed, he didn't feel obligated - that was Tony all over. Augh, meaningless information. Tony always made things so difficult when he was left to his own devices. _Think_. She frowned. "Wait a minute. Where's Bruce?"

Fury sighed.

"He was at the tower. Is he all right?"

"He's fine, now," Natasha said. "Dr. Banner was discovered in his lab, out cold."

"What's on the security footage?" She stopped pacing and stood at the window. "There'll be footage of most of the tower, right up until the outage. We have a realtime data link that records the footage to disk-"

Natasha stepped to the side and fiddled with something on the wall. When she stepped back into view, she was overlayed by a large digital image of Bruce's lab displayed on the two-way mirror. The feed was timestamped at twenty minutes before the outage. Bruce worked alone in his lab, worked, worked, worked slower, and slower, slumped over, fell off his stool.

"Someone... took out the Hulk." Pepper blinked. "How- I mean- Is he okay?"

"He's fine. Bruce was there, but while we initially thought-"

"_You _initially thought," Clint said.

Pepper smiled grimly. Clint had been the first to respond to every dinner invitation Pepper had sent out. She wondered if he genuinely liked Bruce, or just felt a sort of kinship toward the Hulk who had so thoroughly thrashed the monster that had taken over Clint's mind for a short time. Probably a little of both, she thought, watching him furrow his brows at Natasha.

"Damage to the tower?" Pepper said, matter-of-fact. She liked Bruce. He was one of Tony's more trustworthy close friends. But he was still the Hulk, and while there had been only that one incident when he'd been caught off-guard during a game of poker, it had still been An Incident.

Natasha cleared her throat. "Relatively little. And not the Hulk's particular style. "

"So that would mean the - attack started before the power went out," Pepper pieced. "How could someone do that? The tower's security - I thought the outage shut down the tower's security measures. I mean, I assumed," she edited hastily. But that damage was already done; she watched them all exchange uncomfortable doubts across eyelines. She wrinkled her nose in annoyance. "So we're looking for something that could shut down the tower's security _before _the attack," she clarified. "I assume you attempted to hack every computer in the building?"

"We just spent the better part of ass-o'clock combing over every inch of Stark Tower," Fury confirmed. "Including any computers we could get into. Stark's was locked down, which we expected, but we were able to find the piece of code that shut down the tower's defenses."

"A virus. But that's impossible. Did you manage to trace the origins? There's a backdoor-"

"Miss Potts," Captain Rogers said, obviously trying to calm her. If he hadn't been so blond and earnest about it, she might have been a little more annoyed. "We did find a-" He flicked a glance toward Fury, then continued. "-A virus, traced it back to your computer. Apparently we can do that," he added under his breath, and Pepper laughed a short burst of exasperation.

"He's right," Natasha said, not at all amused. "We're going to get to the bottom of this, but until then-"

"How are you getting to the bottom of it when you're _wasting time _here with me?" Pepper dug into her laptop bag and pulled out a USB drive. "I just spent the entire flight collating everything I know about last night, Tony's usual haunts, a _very _long list of his enemies. Look through it. Memorize it. Dig into my personal life if you feel you must, comb through the list of known associates of mine that I know you have despite never having asked me for, but do it at lightning speed." She got up and stalked the two-way mirror. "You don't know all that we've been through together," she said. "So maybe I can't expect you to understand the lengths I would go to to keep Tony safe. Find him. Do it now. If he has been harmed because of the time you've wasted _arresting _the only one of us here who _cares _whether he's alive, so help me, you'll come to understand those lengths in _great _detail."

* * *

_[Stark Tower, New York City, NY]_

Bruce snorted to wakefulness in his own bed, fully clothed. Oh no. No no no oh. Oh, wait. He dragged a hand up to his chest. His shirt was... completely intact. Pinned to it, a note:

_**Stay calm. Everything's okay. -N**_

Stay calm. Everything's okay? Why wouldn't everything be okay? What had happened? He sat up, scenarios whirling through his head. In every one of them, he'd hulked, hurt people, someone had redressed him and put him into bed as a kindness. N had to be Natasha. She wasn't overly kind to him, but she wasn't cruel, and she more than the others had seen just what happened to him when the Other Guy showed his face. Not the aftermath, no, everyone had seen that, but the transformation. The utter loss of control of himself, and he thought he occasionally saw pity in her eyes.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and looked at the clock. There was no way it was 5 am. He looked at his watch. A two hour difference. And the alarm clock was blinking -

A power outage. At the tower? Bruce got up to go to the bathroom, shave, shower - try to do normal things while he processed. Tony had said the reactor would run itself for about a year. Maybe his math had been off.

Tony's math was never off.

Maybe something had disrupted the current, maybe it hadn't been the reactor's fault, maybe it hadn't been Tony's. Maybe a bad storm, or a natural disaster, or maybe a huge green monster - He popped his head out of the shower.

"Jarvis? You up?"

"Yes, Dr. Banner. It's good to see you up and about."

"Uh, thanks. We lose power last night?"

"For some time," Jarvis replied. "I'm afraid I have no knowledge of why, although I can say that before I was able to reboot properly and lock down the tower's defenses, SHIELD Agents had been searching the tower. And..."

Jarvis seemed hesitant.

"And what?" Bruce's first thoughts were of the unsavory possibilities of any government branch poking around where he lived, but they'd left him alone in his bed after the appearance of the Other guy, so - "Jarvis, did I hurt anyone?"

"Unfortunately, I cannot say."

Bruce's heart sank. "Did I cause the power outage?"

"I don't know that, either, sir."

Bruce frowned. "Then... what?"

"Mr. Stark is missing."

"Missing? Are you sure?" Bruce stepped out of the shower altogether and didn't even bother drying off before he hurried into fresh clothes. "I mean it's a big building."

"He is nowhere in Stark Tower, I'm afraid," Jarvis said.

"Not flying around-"

"No, sir."

Bruce cursed and grabbed his shoes. When he put his hand on the doorknob, Jarvis stopped him with: "There are two agents waiting outside the door to escort you to SHIELD Headquarters."

Bruce's shoulders sagged, but that had been where he was headed anyway, so - "Thanks, Jarvis. I'll let you know what I find out."

"Thank you, sir."

The SHIELD agents were the generic sort. He'd been hoping for Clint and Natasha, but generics would do so long as they didn't try anything funny. They didn't so much as look at him, kept their hands off their pistols and walked him from the elevator to a waiting car and then into HQ without saying a word. They probably didn't know anything Bruce wanted to ask anyway. One of them smiled a little when Bruce tried to joke with her, but she just looked out the window again.

"So where are we going?" Bruce finally asked when they were deep in the bowels of HQ. It was distressingly familiar - prison-white and hopelessly pristine. "Am I being arrested? Because that won't end well."

"No," the woman who'd smiled at him in the car said. "Just here." She directed him toward an open door, and when he stepped in, it was just in time to hear Pepper's voice through an intercom say:

"If he has been harmed because of the time you've wasted _arresting _the only one of us here who _cares _whether he's alive, so help me, you'll come to understand those lengths in _great _detail."

"Uh oh," Bruce said, stepping into the room. Clint, Nat, Captain, and Fury all looked like they'd rather be anywhere else, and Clint and Rogers looked like they were about to pee themselves. And no wonder. Pepper, on the other side of a two-way mirror in what must have been a locked room, stood at the glass, cold as ice and as serious as a really serious thing. When she looked over at him, presumably because he'd entered the room, he said, "I had nothing to do with this, I swear." He frowned at the people on his side of the glass. "So... I guess you guys know Tony's missing, right?"

"We know," Clint said.

"So in an effort to find him, you what? Arrested Pepper?"

"We're following the evidence where it leads," Fury said.

Bruce frowned. "How reliable," he said, leaning forward on the table.

"Doctor?" Natasha murmured.

"He's fine," Pepper snapped. "But you're going to see _me _get angry if you don't leave that room this instant and find Tony."

"She's right, I'm fine," Bruce said, craning his neck to pop it. Even as he said it, he could feel the angry thrum under his skin. "But you probably should go anyway." He nodded at Pepper. "You wouldn't like her when she's angry."

They did go, and Bruce pulled a chair over to the glass to sit, massaging his headache. "So, I suppose there's some 'evidence' that places you what, at the scene?"

"A virus traced to my computer. Bruce, are you really okay?" She sat across from him, anger replaced fully by worry, for him, for Tony.

"Yeah. I just woke up in my bed. I don't know-"

"Security footage shows you just slowly passing out. It must have been a gas or something, through the ventilation."

"Slow enough that it didn't startle _him _into action," Bruce finished. "Well, I'll be damned."

"Someone knows how you work," Pepper said seriously.

"The same someone who knows how to link a virus back to your computer." They were both quiet a moment.

"What'd Jarvis say about it?"

Bruce sighed. "He didn't know anything - offline during the whole thing, I guess."

"Jarvis is never offline, just occasionally blinded," Pepper said. "He was plenty frantic in Malibu about that."

"That's frantic?" Bruce marvelled, remembering the _sirs _and _I'm afraids _delivered in an emotionless fashion he had attributed to being a robot. "He really is British."

Pepper snorted, and Bruce smiled. It was painful to see her so worked up, angry. It'd been a joke, but she even frightened _him_when she was on a tear. "Anyway, he did say that Tony wasn't in the tower. Not anywhere, lying somewhere unconscious or holed up somewhere laughing at us all. And not flying around in that tin can of his, either. I asked."

Pepper was quiet, lips pursed in thought. "Wait," she said. "Fury said that Tony's computer was locked down."

"Yeah?"

"Well, my computer uses the same security protocols Tony's does. How were they able to trace anything to my computer and not be able to get into Tony's at all?"

"You think you're being framed? By who?" He glanced up at the security camera in the corner that was undoubtedly recording their every word.

Pepper shrugged. "What's easier to believe, Bruce? That _I _would ever hurt Tony, or that SHIELD, with its secret weapons projects and questionable morals would sacrifice him for some - greater good?"

"What - greater good? Come on, Pepper, think."

"I _am _thinking, Bruce. I'm thinking, what could shut the Tower down when I _know _it has reserves for at least three more months? I'm thinking, who knows exactly how to take out a structure that isn't on the grid, how to take out everything that keeps Tony safe, everything that keeps him alive, and who has the resources to do that? I'm thinking, who has a file on Tony that outlines all the ways in which he could become a threat to national security? I'm thinking, who has a plan in place to stop him if he ever went rogue, Bruce? Who has all of that?"

Bruce was quiet a moment. "A large scale EMP device," he said quietly. "Which he'd have been protected from if he'd been in the latest iteration of the suit."

"SHIELD would know if he was on a mission. That time of night? He'd only be in the suit if he was testing, or if he was joyriding. But no one really thinks that SHIELD is leaving any of us our privacy. Tony knows they have bugs and little cameras. He just doesn't _care._"

"You think they have cameras?" Bruce wondered. Then he shook his head. "Wait. Wait. We're going way too far down this rabbit hole. You know I'm the last person to trust SHIELD, but I don't think they did _this_. The Avengers are the best asset they have. They'd have to know that none of us would work for them again if they went after one of us."

Pepper frowned. "I don't know. Clint and Natasha-"

"Are company guys. I know. But I think you'd be surprised by them. Their loyalties have only ever been with parties of their choosing. I think they'd choose Tony, as long as he hadn't totally supernovaed."

Pepper smiled wanly. "And Rogers?" she asked. "Any smooth-talking you want to do about him?"

Bruce frowned, hurt. "I'm not smooth-talking you, Pepper. I can barely smooth-talk myself."

She was quiet, staring at him.

Bruce sighed, thinking. "I don't know about Steve," he said. "He's nice to me. He's polite. He's a good leader. I know he and Tony bump heads, but he's team-loyal, especially after finding out about SHIELD's little Hydra secret. I think even if Tony _had _supernovaed, Steve would be there to at least try to pull him back from the brink. And Tony hasn't. No one thinks he has. He's been taken, and we're on his side. _Your _side. You have to believe that."

Pepper pursed her lips in that attractive doubtful pout she had. "I have survived too many years with Tony to be so naive, Bruce. But I want to believe that." She smiled, and it reached her eyes. "I believe it about you."

Bruce shrugged, grinning. "Hey, it's a start."

"I know you have Tony's back," she said, a little sad. "You both know what it's like to be betrayed. To have everyone doubt the goodness of your heart. I'm not putting my trust in them, not yet. I'm putting it in you. Okay?"

Bruce shook his head. "I appreciate the vote of confidence. _I _trust them, but I promise I'll keep an eye out. Pepper. At the end of this, when Tony's back and safe, I hope you'll consider trusting the others. We'll figure it out. They care about Tony more than you know. Probably more than _they_realize."

Pepper sighed raggedly. "I hope you're right. Just remind them - he's not as indestructible as he likes to say he is. Okay?"

* * *

_[Outside SHIELD Headquarters, New York City, NY]_

"That bastard," Clint said. "How can a man like Stark vanish into thin air?" He frowned as Captain Rogers strode past him. "Wait, where are you going?" What happened to having a plan?"

"I have a plan," Steve said without stopping.

Clint shared a look with Natasha before quickstepping to join him on either side.

"Cap?" Nat said.

"I'm not going to sit around and twiddle my thumbs while a teammate is in trouble."

Clint snorted. "Got to you, did she?"

"She's right," Rogers said. "She thought through in ten minutes what it took us four hours to figure out. All we could do was sit and _talk_. We have no leads."

Rogers frustrated wasn't a pretty sight. Clint tried to be soothing, but uh, it wasn't exactly his strong suit. "So we're..."

"Going to get some. There has to be something in that tower that-"

"Heads up," Natasha said, just as the sky went dark and thunder rolled through the atmosphere. The wind kicked up, the sky twisted into color and plume, and then Thor crashed into the pavement before them. The sky cleared as he stood.

"My friends!" The Asgardian dude beamed from ear to ear, arms out in greeting.

"About time," Natasha said, pressing ahead past him. "We called for you hours ago."

Thor's smiled faded as he turned to follow. Clint shrugged in sympathy. "My apologies," Thor began. "There was-"

"It's fine," she said, waving off his excuse. "Now that you're here, we can get you up to speed."

"Tony's missing," Clint pushed in. "We have no clues, nothing. Pepper's under arrest-"

Thor frowned. "Pepper Potts has been imprisoned? But she is a loyal companion to Tony Stark. I do not believe she could be involved in anything nefarious."

"Yeah..." Clint said, "neither do we."

Natasha gave him a look.

He shrugged. "Do we?"

"No," Rogers said, "we don't. But until we have another lead..."

Thor laid a heavy hand on Rogers' shoulder. "We will find him. You are about to acquire one of these 'leads'?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Then we will go and obtain it. Perhaps when we have found Tony Stark, you will assist me in a task."

Natasha frowned. "What task?"

"My brother has fled to Midgard and I fear he is in grave danger."

The entire party, save Thor, halted on the spot. Thor continued apace for a moment before he turned, apparently only just realizing

Clint gaped. "Please tell me you have another brother."

"Loki's _here_?" Natasha growled. She whirled on the spot, back toward HQ. Clint and Rogers hurried after her, and Thor was quick on their heels.

"My friends," he called. "Must we not collect one of these 'leads'?"

"We just _got _one," Natasha snapped, already on her phone. "Director, Potts needs to be isolated, immediately. We're on our way back."

_[Unknown location]_

"I don't really _do _nostalgia," Tony replied, sitting up. He cataloged the room in an instant: dirty empty walls, non-electronic door locks, grates over the overhead lighting, which was recessed into the ceiling and well out of reach. Not a lot to work with. He looked back at Hammer. "Where is it?"

"You mean, the little gadget that keeps you alive?" Justin Hammer grinned. "It's safe. But we wouldn't want you to get any ideas about escaping or killing people or sending a message to those little friends of yours."

"Wouldn't want that," Tony muttered, grabbing onto the battery and pulling it toward him. The weight of it recalled a month of habit, before he'd gotten irritated enough to forge new breakthroughs in arc reactor technology. "So what do you want? Finally get sick of making stuff that doesn't work?" He arched a brow disapprovingly. "Don't tell me you need a loan."

"Oh, no," Hammer said, idling toward him. "Nothing like that."

Tony frowned and put his hands onto the ground to lever himself up. Immediately, two goons stepped out of the shadows behind Hammer.

"I wouldn't."

Tony slumped back to the ground and laughed. "You kidnapped me to make me sit in the corner? If I say I learned my lesson, do I get to go back to the other kids?" One of the goons had a taped up nose; oh yeah, right. He remembered something about headbutting some guy in the face - before the terrible crushing pain in his chest and the popping lights in his vision and the lingering thought that Pepper would be _so _pissed that he'd spilled his smoothie all over the floor.

"Don't be like that, Anthony. We're all friends here. Really. You just sit and relax."

"Oh, I'm relaxed. _You _seem a little tense." Tony narrowed his eyes, trying to puzzle out the plot. What he had was money and genius. If Hammer didn't want either, then maybe... maybe it was just revenge. Wonderful. "Anyone else want a drink?"

"Oh, sure," Hammer said. "We'll just have a drink. Oh, wait. No, I don't think we will. See, I do want _something _from you." He crouched in front of Tony and pressed his fingertips into Tony's temples, giving him a good shake. "I want that big _brain _of yours to do something for me."

Tony twisted out of his grasp. Okay, it _was _his genius. "Justin Hammer needs someone to think for him. Who's surprised?" He looked up at the goons. "You? Maybe you? No?" He looked back at Hammer, smiling grimly. "No one's surprised, buddy. You know you could have just Facebook messaged me. Or don't they have Facebook in prison."

"Guys like you and me don't stay in prison, Anthony. You know that. We're a different breed. We ought to have been partners, but you just _had _to go it alone. Throw your company's best assets in the gutter, embrace the... _liberal agenda_."

Unbidden, Pepper's unamused face came to mind - specifically that moment when he'd told her, lied flat out, that he'd gotten bored of the liberal agenda. It was a last ditch effort to persuade her to take his company because he was _dying _and he needed someone he trusted to take it in the direction he wanted it to go. But the look on her face still made him feel like a disappointment.

"But we've always been men of war, men of action," Hammer continued. "That's still in you, somewhere."

"Hey. The point. Let's find it, shall we? Also: fire your monologuing coach. Waste of time."

Hammer grinned at him, like a … not a shark, not a wolf. No, those things were smart enough to _kill _their enemies. Hammer grinned like he knew he was in a room with a thing that could kill him, but thought he'd figured out how to tame the beast. He snapped his fingers and stood, and the goon with the broken nose slapped a sheaf of paper into his hand.

"I want you to do some math for me."

Tony blinked. "Some... math?"

"Yeah. You know I've always been a big picture guy, broad strokes, grand concepts. I don't bother with the trivial-"

"_Math?_" Tony repeated. He laughed, resting back against the wall behind him and shaking his head. "Yeah, we're done here. I gotta say, this is possibly the most underwhelming kidnapping I've ever heard of. Hammer, F minus for cheating - you know Mr Schultz knows my handwriting. You guys can have Cs because I can see you tried. Reactor. Now. Give." He held out his hand, like he was persuading a dog to give up a ball. "Giiiive."

"We'll see. Math first. I've got reams and reams of numbers that I can't seem to get to come out. But see, I _need _these numbers to come out."

"Okay," Tony said lightly. "I'll need a computer, and-"

Hammer laughed. "Yeah. Right. I picked you because you can do this in your head. No computer needed. I know your story, Anthony. I barely trust you with that thing-" He gestured at the battery. "Heck, you might not even get a pencil." He thought a moment. "Yeah, you know what? No pencil."

Tony rolled his eyes. "Listen, if you need a math lesson, I know some good tutors. You remember you're supposed to carry the tens, right?"

"Carry the tens," Hammer repeated, chuckling. "That's good." He tossed the sheaf of paper to the ground at Tony's feet.

Tony looked down at it and didn't move. "Yeah," he drawled, looking back up at Hammer. He recited: "I'm not doing anything for you, or any shady organization you work for, math or otherwise, ever. I just don't know how I can be more clear about this."

"Tsk. Have it your way. Guys?"

The goons came forward. A few minutes later, Tony was gasping on the ground, bleeding from the nose and a split lip. He had some experience in the hand-to-hand - Happy, some mixed martial arts class he took once, and of course the whole superhero thing. But he was carrying a _car battery _and had to take care not to let anything get disconnected. And he didn't want to admit it, but after the incredible thrumming power of the arc reactor, running on a car battery left him feeling like he was always ever on the verge. He could imagine those tiny shards embedded in his heart wiggling in an attempt to escape the lower powered electromagnet holding them back.

Tony pushed himself to sitting and dragged a hand across his mouth. "That it?"

"It can be. Just a little math, and you're outta here."

"Like I said, I'd need some stuff. TI-81? Come on, I could barely even program Dummy with that."

"I heard about that project," Hammer chuckled. "Gotta tell you, Dummy isn't what I'd name one of the first genuine examples of modern AI."

Tony shrugged. "Well, if you'd ever met him." He narrowed an eye at Hammer in thought. "Actually, you'd probably get along. He needs someone who can talk to him on his level." He grinned.

"Oh yeah," Hammer said, bowing a little in deference. "No question, you're the expert, the mathematician. That's why I need you."

Tony looked up at a goon. "Any word on that drink?"

"Come on, be serious."

"As a heart attack," Tony quipped.

"Funny you should mention."

Tony backed away as the goons came forward again, but they just held him down rather than try to wail on him and wrestled the battery out of his arms. He watched in horror as the one with the broken nose delicately fingered a line running under his shirt from his chest to the battery and then unwound it from the post a few turns. Tony looked at up Justin Hammer, defiant. Fine. Fine. From the corner of his eye, he saw the goon lift the wire from the post and suddenly there was a crushing squeezing pressure and sudden loss of breath.

He knew this. Obadiah. At least he could move this time. The one holding him down allowed him to press a hand to his chest, but he couldn't catch his breath, he couldn't get enough oxygen, he felt too light, dizzy, and his chest - oh -

A jolt and an internal hum and he gasped, curling in on himself, around the hole where the arc reactor should have been, around muscles that screamed for the oxygen his heart couldn't deliver fast enough. But it was beating, it was beating and he was okay. _A few seconds gone from the hourglass. That's all._

"Whatdya say, Anthony? Ready to carry the tens for me, big guy?"

Tony looked up at him, pale and shaking but angry. "Screw you."

And then the hands were on him again, and he was fighting it because now he knew what was coming, but kick though he might, life support switched off again and he was dragging in air, light-headed and sick. A dull pain radiated from a point in his chest into his head and arm - classic. But everything was fine. Everything was fine. Because Hammer wasn't going to _kill _him, and these were just seconds from the hourglass. He crossed his arms over his chest, willing his hands to stop shaking.

"Annnnthonyyy," Hammer sang, somewhere in the distance, through a dense fog that soaked up most of the amplitude of the sound.

Tony blinked hard. He needed a plan. He needed time. He needed his heart to keep beating so he could _think_. He flopped a hand in Hammer's direction. Current was restored and he lurched onto his side to curl up again, trying to hang onto his lunch.

Hammer crouched next to him. "I don't want to have to keep doing this, Anthony," he purred.

Tony glared. "Yes you do," he managed.

Hammer laughed. "Can't get anything past you, can I?" he whispered. "Now how about it?"

"No." He just had to get through it. Tony'd been tortured, and this wasn't nearly so bad as being drowned. Except for the parts where he couldn't breathe and his body insisted he was about to die. At least he was dry.

Hammer stood up and looked down at him. Tony didn't bother meeting his eye. Better to look like he was willing to withstand anything rather than help him. With a growl, Hammer spun and knelt next to the battery.

Tony squeezed his eyes shut.

"Stop!"

The voice was new, but familiar, and - oh. Really?

"Justin. Might I have a word?"

Tony heard Hammer get up after a second. He opened his eyes in time to watch Hammer's shoes as he left the room. Waiting at the doorway were the legs of the newcomer, belonging to the voice Tony remembered, and he looked up into the face of Loki. Loki watched Tony for a moment, his face lit up with that insane grin, before turning to follow.

Jesus. _Loki_.


End file.
